Archive for the 'Infectious Disease' Category
Here’s some of links to articles about the growth of MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Quite a lot of interest in this given the recent paper by Dr. Monina Klevens et al at the CDC which concluded:
“Based on 8,987 observed cases of MRSA and 1,598 in-hospital deaths among patients with MRSA, we estimate that 94,360 [...]
An interesting site, Who is sick, collects data from folks who volunteer the symptoms of their sickness. It then displays this information, in a clear, graphic way, which conveys a few of the key symptoms by use of a color-coded pie chart. Seems like a site that has the potential, if [...]
Well, it seems that the number of bees dying is increasing, and has spread to Canada and to Europe. It’s hardly possible that a pesticide is responsible, given the differing usage patterns among EU and North America. The event has already become critical, as just a little less than about 1/3 of the [...]
Well, as expected, another country has joined Thailand in threatening to “break the patent” for Merck’s Efavirenz. Bloomberg has some reporting of the dispute, and it’s filled with sideways adjectives describing the dispute in a quite stilted way. But this is to be expected, after all someone is trying to buck the patent [...]
A story in The Scientist by Katherine Eban about the woefully inadequate disease surveillance efforts in the USA. In particular, the media have started to play their necessary role, as discussed here.
In an earlier discussion I had started over at Freedom to Tinker about the lack of an effective syndromic surveillance system, [...]
Well, it appears that Indonesia is wondering why it should continue it’s efforts obtaining, identifying, processing and purifying bird flu samples, if WHO is going to give them to just a few Western big pharmaceutical concerns, so those concerns can in turn patent the resulting vaccines, and later extract monopoly prices, and in the process [...]
Updates of 28 October 2007 are italicized
Well here we have real irresponsibility, and it’s just one of many examples of the USA health infrastructure falling to sub-standard oversight. In typical fashion, this has received almost no press coverage, and caters to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the mega-food manufacturers, ignoring the [...]
Well, just a slight ripple in the press, about the lack of preparedness for a bio-terror event, and the glacial pace that the authorities are preparing for such an event is contrasted with the near certainty among those leaders polled that a bio-terror attack is likely within the next 5 years. This [...]
Here’s a story that I’ll follow. It’s about an outbreak of Pertussis in Boston, only it turns out it really wasn’t Pertussis, nobody knows what it is. I had postulated that a free press is a key element to bringing public resources to bear on health issues, and to the ultimate [...]
There are so many little nuggets in Amartya Sen’s book Development as Freedom that I really don’t know where to start, as there were so many little post-it notes stuck at passages that I thought were either entertaining or made excellent points, or contained interesting perspectives on points I’d thought about before that I stopped [...]
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